Java Language #1 in January 2016

The latest TIOBE index has Java language moving strongly into the #1 programming language for January 2016. If you’re not familiar with the TIOBE Index, it’s an index that looks at searches on the major search engines, blogs, forums, and Youtube (Did you know Youtube is now the second biggest search engine?) The “Popularity of Programming Language” index uses a slightly different approach, also has Java remaining at the #1 position for January 2016. Both indexes are giving Java over 20% of the market.

The Java Language Into the Future

I’ve read a lot of articles predicting the demise of the Java language. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The Java language continues to evolve with the times. Java 7 was a fairly boring release. Java 8, however, has a number of exciting features. Java 8 lambdas are a really neat new feature to Java. It’s a feature that is long overdue. But I have to give kudos to the Java team. They did a real nice job of implementing lambdas.

It’s these new features that allow Java to evolve and remain relevant as modern programming languages. Functional programming has been a big buzz in the last few years. Guess what, with Java 8 and lambdas, you can do functional programming in Java now.

The JVM is the crown jewel of the Java community. With each release, the JVM becomes more stable and faster. Early releases of Java were dreadfully slow. Today, Java often approaches the performance of native code.

Another fun trend in the Java community is the rise of alternative JVM languages. That same Java runs more than just Java. My personal favorite alternative JVM languages are Groovy and Scala. Both are trending nicely in the programming indexes. And you’re seeing greater support for Groovy and Scala in Spring too. (Expect to see more posts on both in 2016!) If you account for these two alternative JVM languages, you can see how Java is truly dominating the Microsoft languages in the marketplace.

It’s going to be interesting to see what the future holds. I’m personally interested in the Swift programming language. Could Swift someday dethrone Java from the #1 spot? I think that’s going to depend on how the Swift open source community develops. I thought about building an enterprise class application in Swift. Is there a DI / IoC framework like Spring for Swift? No, not yet. An ORM like Hibernate for Swift? No, not yet. And Enterprise Integration framework like Spring Integration or Apache Camel for Swift? No, not yet. I find languages like Swift and Go very interesting, but they just don’t have the open source ecosystem which Java has. If a language is going to dethrone Java from the top, it’s going to need a thriving open source community behind it.

Like Java, all the popular open source projects continue to evolve with the language. So any calls for the demise of Java are premature. The future for the Java language is bright. The future for the Java community is brite!